“We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of – of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change,” Sen. Whitehouse said today following a closed-door climate discussion with executives from the NFL, NHL and NBA.

He said the threat to hockey is that people will no longer be able to play outdoors on frozen ponds:

“Without cold enough weather for frozen ponds, the kind of hockey that you play out of doors with your friends gets a little bit harder to achieve.”

The deep blue is a winter storm watch for Sunday. Brown is a high wind warning which applies to I-80 in southeast Wyoming. Purple is a travel advisory for freezing rain. Gray is a dense fog advisory. Green in the Cascades is a flood warning.

Elsewhere, the weather is amazingly calm for the trip home after Thanksgiving.

The pro-global warming advocates have been especially nasty the last three weeks (you should see my email!) and they have questioned, without basis, the fact the U.S. is in the longest "drought" since a major hurricane came ashore.

Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. has updated his graph and here it is. The slight upward trend (red line) in the graph indicates major hurricanes are slightly less common than previously.

Note to my many correspondents about hurricanes: If you wish to impress me (and I am impressible), send me something about the science. "I believe," while I'm sure is well-intended, is meaningless in science. A hypothesis, while meaningful (and worthy of respect!) is not "evidence." Send me evidence and if it is something I have not seen before I will happily consider it and will likely write about it. OK?

Friday, November 29, 2013

Kathleen and I saw A Christmas Story at the now-defunct Town East Theatre in Wichita. There was little buzz and the critics were indifferent. Nevertheless, it received a standing ovation when the end credits rolled.

So, happy 30th birthday Ralphie, Randy, Mother Parker and, in a performance that should have received an Academy Award, The Old Man!!

As many know, my meteorology degree is from the College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. I have minors in both engineering and mathematics as well as my degree in meteorology. I have been managing technical people (meteorologists and computer programmers) for more than 35 years.

The item below caught my eye. I am not making a political statement but a management one.

The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”

The management question, when trying anything new, is “When does reality trump planning?” For the officials overseeing Healthcare.gov, the preferred answer was “Never.” Every time there was a chance to create some sort of public experimentation, or even just some clarity about its methods and goals, the imperative was to avoid giving the opposition anything to criticize.

At the time, this probably seemed like a way of avoiding early failures. But the project’s managers weren’t avoiding those failures. They were saving them up. The actual site is worse—far worse—for not having early and aggressive testing. Even accepting the crassest possible political rationale for denying opponents a target, avoiding all public review before launch has given those opponents more to complain about than any amount of ongoing trial and error would have.

All appearances to the contrary, the managers involved in this debacle aren’t dumb. But they come from a background — law and politics — where arguments often take the place of reality, and plausibility can be as good as, or better than, truth.

What engineers know that lawyers and politicians often don’t is that in the world of things, as opposed to people, there’s no escaping the sharp teeth of reality. But in law, and especially politics, inconvenient facts are merely inconvenient, something to be rationalized away.

When our country has accomplished great things in the past, there has usually been a great engineer running the program: Hyman Rickover with the nuclear submarine program, or Wernher von Braun with the Apollo space program, for example. Rickover and von Braun were famously stern taskmasters, but they did not substitute wishes for reality.

Which may be why they were able to launch submarines, and rockets that astounded the world. While today, we can’t even launch a website.

While engineers, occasionally with justification, are accused of wanting to "test things to death," the engineering impulse to test things should be encouraged rather than suppressed. Once a reasonable amount of testing has been done, bring everyone together and walk through the product, website, whatever, and go through each function -- in real world conditions -- and make sure it works. Then, and only then, should it move forward.

But, the bottom line is: Management should celebrate finding flaws during the testing stage rather than criticizing. Much better to find the flaw during testing than after the product is launched.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Over the last few days, I guess because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, we've heard more about global warming, hurricanes getting worse (they aren't!!) and the 'news' that Al Gore has become a vegan. And, there have been numerous tweets accusing skeptics of misusing a logo of a professional science organization. I have no interest in going into the details of this and I do not condone the misuse of logos if that is what happened.

However, the fudging of scientific credentials is done routinely in the pro-catastrophic global warming camp. People without any expertise in climate are presented as "experts" even as organizations are trumpeting their "scientific integrity." This describes several well-known organizations. Let me pick one to illustrate.

Notice they talk about "scientific integrity."And, they level plenty of criticism at others (see the yellow link) for alleged ethical sins. Given that high level of ethics they claim, they only allow the top scientists join, correct? Not so fast!

A dog can become a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here is the organization's newest member!

Okay, that is funny but they only have the top meteorologists and climate scientists making policy and communicating with the public, right? Wrong. Here is the background of the head of the Union's "climate initiative."

History? Ecology? Surely, there is coursework in climate. So, I went to Yale University's website and looked up the curriculum in ecology. Nothing in climate or relating to climate. Please click on the purple link and see for yourself. While I do not question Dr. Boucher's sincerity or good faith, I do question him being presented as an expert by a purportedly science-based organization. Of course, as we discussed two weeks ago, he is hardly alone. Over and over, this blog has documented pro-global warming organizations putting forward individuals as climate experts with little or no formal training in atmospheric science or climatology.

So, we have a union of "scientists" that allows puppies as members, has a head of the climate science program that has not studied climate science, and criticizes the ethics of others.

While the skeptical side is hardly perfect, I suggest that those that occupy glass office buildings don't throw stones.

There are major delays at LaGuardia and Philadelphia (an hour or more), there are half-hour delays at Baltimore and at Ft. Lauderdale. Keep in mind that a plane taking off an hour late from PHL will cause a delay elsewhere. Suggest checking the "flight status" info on your airline's website before you head for the airport.

That is freezing rain -- glaze ice -- in purple in southern Pennsylvania. This will affect the Pennsylvania Turnpike and other major highways in the area. The shades of blue are various intensities of snow, the darker the heavier.

As much as four to six inches of rain is expected in the Middle Atlantic region leading to some flooding.

Right now, LaGuardia is the only airport with restrictions on incoming flights.

And, just for fun, it is snowing in parts of the Houston metro area as far south as Katy and downtown!

This may be one of the worst holiday periods for airline travelers ever. I urge you to use the tips found here if you are traveling in the East (including changing planes) Tuesday or Wednesday. The airlines have already issued waivers so, by being proactive, you may be able to "beat the storm" which is the best strategy in this situation.
Latest AccuWeather regional radar at 10:30am CST:

This is the area where poor travel conditions (slick roads even if precipitation isn't falling) are expected into this evening. The worst conditions are in pink.

Since Wednesday is the biggest travel day of the year, here is a detailed simulated radar for 7am EST Wednesday.

It shows thunderstorms and/or heavy rain at Boston, the New York airports, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. What this means is that the airlines will start the day behind and will likely lose ground from there. Rebook and leave early if you can!

The storm continues to evolve and it looks like it is going to be a real mess in the East.

Winter weather travel tips (valuable in situations like these) are here. These tips, which include dealing with the airlines in winter weather, should be reviewed as quickly as possible to be effective. Waivers are in effect in most of these areas and the airline will allow you to leave early to beat the storm if space is available. Take advantage if you can!

Perhaps because it has been in thenews across the country this week, we went from 12 copies at Amazon yesterday to 7 now.

Of course, Warnings is the upbeat story of how courageous weather scientists "tamed" tornadoes, hurricanes, and wind-shear airline crashes. It tells the real story of what went wrong in Katrina, how Ted Fujita (known for the "Fujita Scale") probably saved more lives by stopping the once-frequent airline crashes, and why flying is not as safe in storms as it should be. The book has a 5-star rating from Amazon.

So, if you are planning to purchase a copy as a gift, please go ahead and do so. Otherwise, you might encounter one of our semi-frequent problems when Amazon runs out.

Here is the AccuWeather Regional Radar at 3pm showing current precipitation:

Things go downhill as the week progresses in the South and East.
Here is the probability of 2" or more of snow for Monday and Tuesday (i.e., 48 hr. beginning at midnight tonight, CST).

There is a chance that parts of western Pennsylvania will have more than six inches.

Here is the probability of one-tenth of an inch of freezing rain (glaze ice) tonight into Wednesday morning. Note, the southern end of this band extends into some southern states that do not have the snow and ice clearing capabilities of areas farther north.

Of course, I will be continuing to update travel conditions as the week progresses.